Upon his re-election in 2006, then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein offered the free use of underutilized school facilities to a bumper crop of charter schools opening that yearâincluding my first. Fueled by this policy, charter-school enrollment in the city grew from 11,000 to almost 70,000 by the end of Mr. Bloombergâs second term in 2013, and my one school grew to 22.

As the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schoolsâfree public schools open to all children in New York City through a random lotteryâIâve seen firsthand how allowing âco-locationâ with district schools has helped charter schools and their students thrive. Success Academy currently has 32 schools spread across the Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan and Queens boroughs and recently was granted approval from our chartering authority, the State University of New York, to open 14 more.

Three-quarters of our students are poor enough to receive subsidized lunch, and 94% are children of color. Our students have excelled. They not only rank in the top 1% in math and top 3% in English among all state schools, but they take top honors in national debate and chess championships. They compete in ballroom dancing, soccer and track and field.

The unions can’t possible deny those stats…but they do, and they continually try to destroy a system that is clearly working.

Critics charge, however, that the academic successes posted by our schools and other charters result from cherry-picking the best studentsâand that since the harder-to-educate students are dumped in district schools, any academic gains by charters are offset by losses in district schools.

It is now possible to evaluate that claim.

New York City has 32 community school districts. The availability of free facilities in some of them has spurred rapid charter-school growth, while in others, the absence of such facilities has thwarted it. As a result, charter enrollment varies widely, from nearly half of students in the Central Harlem district to none at all in other districts.

This divergence, much like Germanyâs division after World War II into a free-market West and a Communist East, has created perfect conditions for a real-world experiment. We can examine the 16 districts where charter school enrollment is highest (charter-rich districts) and the 16 districts where it is lowest (charter-light districts) and see how their relative rankings, based on their results on statewide English and math proficiency exams, changed between 2006 and 2014.

Of the 16 charter-rich districts, 11 rose in the rankings. And of the eight among those 16 with the highest charter enrollment, all rose save one. The district that jumped furthest, rocketing up 11 spots between 2006 and 2014, was District 5 in Central Harlem, which has the cityâs highest charter-school enrollment (43%).

And what about the 16 charter-light districts? Thirteen fell in the rankings, and not one rose. For example, District 12 in the Bronx, which in 2006 ranked higher than Central Harlem, now ranks 13 spots lower. District 29 in Queens, which in 2006 ranked 15 spots higher than Central Harlem and has fewer poor students, now ranks lower.

Michael Bloomberg’s astroturf organisation, Everytown, Â set up to counter the 5 million member NRA has been busted telling whopper sized lies about school shootings. The anti-gun group created a list of 74 supposed school shootings in the last 18 months and pimped it to a compliant media who spread the message. The problem is,Â only 15Â are actually are what most people would call âschool shootingsâ. The rest are a collection of suicides, gang activity or domestic incidents.

After the failure of his Mayors Against Illegal Guns group to sway public opinion in favor of more gun control, Michael Bloomberg announcedÂ earlier this yearÂ that he would be funneling at least $50 million to a new, âgrassrootsâ organization now calledÂ Everytown For Gun SafetyÂ with the hope of âoutmusclingâ that scourge of civilized society, the National Rifle Association, and their ill-begotten political influence (because of, you know, their five million official members and millions more sympathizers). In what is only EverytownâsÂ latestdisplay of choosing deliberate exaggerations, lies, and scare tactics over honest conversation, the group recently updatedÂ their running listÂ claiming that there have now been at least 74 school shootings just since the massacre at Newtown in December of 2012, which a HuffPo editor then helpfully mapped out:

For a start they usually rinse you and secondly it will cost them a great deal of hooter.

National Reviewâs Jim GeraghtyÂ posed a pointed questionÂ from the National Rifle Associationâs annual meeting this weekend: Why do gun-rights supporters win when other conservative causes lose?

And in fact over the past 20 years, gun advocates have scored an astounding string of successes:

All 50 states now issue concealed-carry permits to allow approved gun owners to carry firearms into public places. In many states, permit holders may carry guns even into bars and non-TSA-patrolled areas of airports.

In 2008, gun advocates persuaded the Supreme Court toÂ overruleÂ a century of precedent and redefine the Second Amendment not as a right of state governments to form militias but as an individual right to acquire private firearms.

Gun advocates persuaded Congress in 2004 to let lapse the Clinton-era ban on assault rifles. In the mid-1990s, they voted to halt government research into the public-health effects of gun ownership when that research yielded uncongenial evidence.

Even more impressive, this string of victories was scored as gun ownership in America tumbled.Â Only about one-thirdÂ of American households now own a gun, compared to about one-half in 1973.Â Much of this decline can be traced to the fading of hunting as an American pastime.Â Only about 6 percentÂ of Americans hunt even once in a year.Â Thatâs just slightly more than the number who attended a ballet performance:Â 3.9 percent.

They regularly rinse candidates and deploy their considerable resources against politicians who seek to impinge of the rights of all Americans to keep and bear arms.

But Michael Bloomberg is going to give it a crack at taking on the NRA…and spending $50 million to do it. He at least understands the daunting task, though I suspect his $50 million will be ineffective against the campaigning prowess of the NRA, who in all likelihood will use this declaration of war as a fundraising drive and pick up even more cash.

Michael R. Bloomberg, making his first major political investment since leaving office, plans to spend $50 million this year building a nationwide grass-roots network to motivate voters who feel strongly about curbing gun violence, an organization he hopes can eventually out muscle the National Rifle Association.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, said gun control advocates need to learn from the N.R.A. and punish those politicians who fail to support their agenda â even Democrats whose positions otherwise align with his own.

âThey say, âWe donât care. Weâre going to go after you,âÂ â he said of the N.R.A. âÂ âIf you donât vote with us weâre going to go after your kids and your grandkids and your great-grandkids. And weâre never going to stop.âÂ â

OF THE 658 schools in Chicago, only 126 are charter schoolsâpublicly funded but independently run and largely free of union rules. Fifteen more are due to open this year. More notable, though, is that four of the most recently-approved charters are in areas where the city recently decided to close 49 public schoolsâthe largest round of such closures in Americaâs history.

Most of the closed schools served poor black children, and were in parts of the city with a shrinking population. The city government argued that these schools were under-used, and that closing them would save $233m that could be reinvested. So it has been: in new science labs, computers, wireless, libraries, art rooms and air conditioning in the charters that took in children from the closed schools.

Charters have worked well in Chicago. Most parents like them, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Board of Education are behind them. The Noble Network, which already runs 14 charter high schools, has just been given permission to open two new ones. Around 36% of the 9,000, mostly poor, children enrolled with Noble can expect to graduate from college, compared with 11% for this income bracket city-wide.

A 2013 study by Stanford University found that the typical Illinois charter pupil (most of them in Chicago) gained two weeks of additional learning in reading, and a month in maths, over their counterparts in traditional public schools. One city network of charters, Youth Connection, is credited with reducing Chicagoâs dropout rate by 7% in a decade. Overall, however, the cityâs public schools are in a sorry state: 51,000 out of 240,000 elementary-school pupils did not meet state reading standards in 2013.

Some will always argue that charters cream off the brighter children and leave sink schools, deprived of resources, behind. The teachersâ unions hate charter schools because they are non-unionised. So they remain a rarity nationwide, with only 5% of children enrolled in them. But a PDK/Gallup poll last year found that 70% of Americans support them. Small wonder: a study of charter high schools in Florida found that they boosted pupilsâ earning power in later life by more than 10%.Â Read more »

This yearâs mayoral race is one of the most chaotic in decades, with more than seven Democratic hopefuls fighting for slivers in a primary that is expected to turn out fewer than 600,000 voters. With the primary still wide open, Mr. Mulgrew believes that his union has the power to crown the new king or queen.

âWeâre not about picking a mayor,â Mr. Mulgrew told Politicker last week at Georgeâs, a diner near the unionâs lower Manhattan headquarters. âWeâre about making a mayor, making the winner. And thatâs what weâre gonna to do.â

For the past four years, the UFT has been working to build up an army of volunteers, pollsters and operatives. By the unionâs count, its endorsements will deliver more than 230,000 members, when retirees, family members and others who live in membersâ homes are included. The union is also planning to spend in the mid to high seven figures on the race, according to a source familiar with the organizationâs finances.Â Read more »

The anti-smoking wowsers want to end smoking and one of their tools suggested is massive tax increases…problem is it won’t work.

âIF IT were totally up to me, I would raise the cigarette tax so high the revenues from it would go to zero,â thundered Michael Bloomberg back in 2002. New York cityâs combative mayor has since raised cigarette taxes several times. The effect has been limited, so he wants to try something new. He recently proposed to outlaw discounting cigarettes and displaying them openly in stores.

Whether these measures will be approvedâand helpâremains to be seen. But Mr Bloomberg may well be right to push for more bans. A new paper by Abel Brodeur of the Paris School of Economics, based on extensive surveys in America, suggests that bans on smoking are not just effective but actually make smokers happier. By not allowing them to light up in restaurants and bars (as New York already does), governments give weaker-willed individuals an excuse to do what they otherwise cannot: stop smoking. As an additional benefit, bans also seem to make spouses of smokers happier.Â Read more »

Despite Bloomberg’s loss in court over his ridiculous soda ban he and the city are trying to appeal the court decision. But perhaps there is a better way:

Bloomberg is a true believer in the lifesaving consequences of his health agenda, and his smoking ban did indeed sweep the country. Yet his soda measure is so obviously ineffectual symbolism that it has a whiff of imposing his will for the sheer sake of it.

The cityâs lawyers argued in court that the Board of Health could hand down the new soda rule because it has broad powers to fight disease. But there is a difference between an outbreak of a deadly communicable disease that has people dropping in the streets and excessive soda consumption. If someone drinks a 32-ounce Cherry Coke next to you at a movie theater, it doesnât make you sick.Â Read more »

A judge struck down New York City’s groundbreaking limit on the size of sugar-laden drinks shortly before it was set to take effect.

The judge agreed with the beverage industry and other opponents that the rule is arbitrary in applying to only some sweet beverages and some places that sell them.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has championed the rule as a pioneering move for fighting obesity. It follows on other efforts his administration has made to improve New Yorkers’ eating habits, from compelling chain restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus to barring artificial trans-fats in restaurant food to prodding food manufacturers to use less salt.Â Read more »

IN NEW YORK they are building tiny apartments less than half the size of cricket pitches. This week the city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced the winner of a design competition to build an apartment tower housing apartments of 300 square feet. In Australian parlance, that’s 28 square metres. That’s a portaloo block. That’s half a tennis court halved, then halved again, then halved again, with a balcony.

“We have a shortfall now of 800,000, and it’s only going to get worse,” Bloomberg said of the city’s dwelling stock.

“This is going to be a big problem for cities with young people.”

It has become a commonplace that in big cities in Australia – cities with young people – there is a housing crisis. In this context the term refers to a different sort of housing crisis to the one that swept through much of the US and Europe, where prices dropped and millions were kicked out of homes because they could not meet repayments.

In the Australian context, the term refers to the opposite sort of housing crisis – where people struggle to get into homes in the first place because they are so expensive.

It is more a New York-style of housing crisis.

Demographia, a research firm, has a knack of winning headlines with yearly reports demonstrating just how unaffordable Australian cities are. The most recent iteration hit the papers this week, with its assertion Australian houses were the world’s third least affordable, behind Hong Kong and Canada.

Sound familiar…Len Brown and labour are certainly planning New York style teeny-tiny apartments…they are deciding what we should live in, not the market. Being socialists though they will more likely be like Soviet style or Chinese tower blocks.

It is obviously very expensive to live in big cities such as Sydney and Melbourne. It is expensive, and fast becoming more so, to rent. And it remains, in raw terms, expensive to buy. Just not the way Demographia described it.

The ratio of median income to average dwelling prices is the most commonly cited measure used to demonstrate how expensive Australian property is. Across the country, this ratio reached a peak of about seven (meaning dwelling prices were worth seven times median annual income) in 2003-04. In capital cities, the ratio was above eight. In Sydney it was above nine.

Historically, this looked high. In the mid-1980s the ratio was about three. The ratio also looked – and looks – high in international terms. This is where Demographia’s surveys, which always place Australia at or near the apex of the world’s least affordable cities, get their popular bite.

But Australian house prices are not international outliers. A Reserve Bank paper last month compared the ratio of incomes to house prices in Australia to a range of comparable countries, but used a different measure of income.

It used an average measure of income from the national accounts (which can therefore be compared to other countries’ national accounts) that was different in a number of respects from median income, one of which was in including income deposited in superannuation accounts.

This sounds strange, because people generally do not use superannuation income to buy and pay off a house.

But it is needed for a fair international comparison, because in places without advanced super systems people still save for their retirements but in ways that are included in national accounts measures of income.

And when you use these national accounts measures, Australian house and apartment prices are pretty much in the middle of countries like France, Belgium, Germany, Canada, Norway and New Zealand.

It is all about the sexy headlines though…while ignoring that there are plenty of ways with which to analyse data.

But the bigger problem with reports like Demographia’s is that they blinker a view of what real housing problems.

What reports like Demographia’s fail to capture – and what terms like ”housing crisis” and ”mortgage stress” in fact only obscure – is the variety of ways in which people respond to what is not so much a crisis as a market.

There are some people in Australia facing a housing crisis. They are homeless. They are couples and individuals facing retirement in a private rental system that offers scant solace to those with little independent income or savings.

Otherwise, people are making choices that invariably respond to the incentives and prices in a big city housing market.

These choices can be uncomfortable – moving back with your parents to save for a mortgage, living in a smaller apartment than you might like. But these are only crises in the sense that seasonal rain is: they can be a drag but they are manageable.

People respond to the Australian housing market every day in decisions about where to live, who to live with, about what to go with or without.

What’s been missing is a similar flexibility and responsiveness on the part of government to help those who genuinely need it; to ensure that if you’re going to live in an apartment the size of a New York shoebox you can be sure it is well made and that you won’t regret the investment; or if you are going to move somewhere with more space, you will have the roads, busways and train stations to ensure that a decision compelled by the housing market doesn’t require cutting you off from the rest of the city.

Len Brown for sure isn;t go to do any of that while he remains focussed on a silly city rail loop.